The photograph of Iesha Evans at a Black Lives Matter protest has become an instant classic. Art critic Jonathan Jones assesses the image’s impact, while photographer Jonathan Bachman recalls how he captured the shot

A great photograph is a moment liberated from time. If we could see what happened before and after this beautiful stillness and hear the cacophony of yells and arguments that must have filled reality’s soundtrack at a protest in Baton Rouge against the taking of black lives, the heroic stand of Iesha L Evans would just be a fragile glimpse of passing courage. It might even be entirely lost in the rush of images and noise. Instead, Reuters photographer Jonathan Bachman was able to preserve a simple human act of quiet bravery and give it an almost religious power.

It is not just that time has frozen but that, in stopping its stream, the camera has revealed a near-supernatural radiance protecting Evans, as if her goodness were a force field. The heavily armoured police officers inevitably look slightly inhuman. They may have good reason to wear such all-covering protective suits and helmets, so soon after a sniper killed five officers who were policing a protest in Dallas but, in their hi-tech riot gear, they unfortunately resemble futuristic insectoid robots, at once prosthetically dehumanised and squatly, massively, menacingly masculine.

Evans, by contrast, shows her calm, composed face and bold, straight body, protected by nothing more than a dress fluttering in the summer breeze. She is a Botticelli nymph attacked by Star Wars baddies. And yet they seem to stop, to yield, held back by something that radiates from her inner composure, her possession of the truth. In the instant that Bachman has caught for ever, the two officers appear confused, paralysed, even defeated by her decorous protest. Their bodies arch backwards, away from her, recoiling in recognition of her power. The officer nearest to the camera looks truly nonplussed, out of his depth, his meaty white hands flailing.

'She was making her stand': image of Baton Rouge protester an instant classic

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People have compared this confrontation between massed forces of authority and a single protester with the famous image of a man facing a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the 1967 photograph of a “flower child” in front of a row of armed soldiers at the Pentagon. Yet the power of this particular image is stranger than that. It summons up supernatural forces. The goodness of Iesha Evans is radiant and that radiance can stop the police in their tracks. Her ramrod immobility not only expresses moral strength but literally gives her a superpower. (Evans’s only comment about the picture, in a Facebook post, was: “I appreciate the well wishes and love, but this is the work of God. I am a vessel!”)

A moment stilled from days of rage creates a stillness, a silence, into which we pour our belief in the human spirit. The violence cutting through the US gives way, mercifully, to an image of nonviolent heroism that recalls the righteous, from Martin Luther King to Rosa Parks. Yet is this picture popular because it expresses the truth, or because it softens it?

This image is beautiful, yet it evades the harsh facts that are tearing America apart. To put it bluntly, it is not young women in floaty dresses who are being killed in cold blood on video by police officers. It is white America’s fear of young black men that is truly at issue here – and this picture allows us to forget that. Alton Sterling was shot dead in Baton Rouge when arresting officers already had him on the ground. That and the killing of Philando Castile are just the latest in a series of depressingly similar cases in which there seems to be overwhelming evidence that young black men are considered fair game for any trigger-happy law enforcement officer or security guard. In turn, 25-year-old Micah Johnson shot dead five police officers in a cycle of violence that has to make us ask if racism is incurably rooted in America’s stained history, if black lives matter at all to white America.

No wonder we turn to this picture for a kind of healing, a twinkling of optimism. This is an image that evokes the heroic days of the civil rights movement: a hopeful moment seized from a storm of horrors. Yet it may be a beautiful illusion, whose gentle strength will break as soon as the next gun is fired.

My best shot: ‘I knew straight away what was happening’ Photographer Jonathan Bachman on his classic shot of the Baton Rouge protests

Another of Bachman’s photographs, showing a protester in Baton Rouge being pinned down by police officers. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

A group of people had come to demonstrate in front of the Baton Rouge police headquarters. They were blocking one of the lanes of traffic on the Airline Highway. That prompted this big mix of Louisiana law enforcement officers and sheriffs from surrounding parishes, as well as the Baton Rouge police department, to come out to try to clear the road.

They had successfully cleared the demonstrators off to the side, but there were some people who weren’t willing to move. So I started photographing that confrontation. I heard someone over my shoulder say: “Wow – she’s going to get arrested.” I turned around and saw this woman just standing there. I knew straight away what was happening; they were arresting her and she was making her stand.

I just got into position and was able to snap the shot. I thought it was important – the woman in the dress is posing no threat and these two male officers are coming to detain her. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t resist arrest, and the officers didn’t throw her to the ground or drag her off. It was very peaceful. I feel the photo is very representative of the peacefulness of the protests that have taken place in Baton Rouge over the past week.

From what I saw earlier in the week – people chanting “No justice, no peace” and “Hands up, don’t shoot” – this is as tense as the situation got in Baton Rouge; there was a lot going on and I was just trying to get into a good spot to document it. I shoot a lot of sports, and speed is key. You have got to keep an open eye – these things happen so quickly. There are tricks, of course, such as looking in your LCD screen to catch reflections off that. Also, Reuters sent me on a hostile-environment training course a couple of months ago and I found that incredibly useful.

I actually filed another photo first, of a woman confronting the police with her arm raised. This one followed about 30 seconds later. I got back from Baton Rouge to 54 emails and 77 text messages. But the real hero of this story is that woman; she deserves all the praise. It was super brave to just stand there and make her stand; I was just off to the side, taking a picture.